In an interview with TIME, GE's CEO takes on critics who say his eye on the bottom line encourages ethical lapses

"Do you understand what I'm trying to say?" demands John Francis Welch Jr. The embattled chairman of General Electric puts an arm around a visitor's shoulders and spreads out an improbable set of papers. One shows that GE, with 222,000 employees in 100 countries, has had only three criminal convictions in the 13 years that Welch has run the company. Another points out that the U.S. Justice Department, which has been hounding GE lately, has had 140 of its employees prosecuted for corruption or other on-the-job offenses just since 1992. Yet another shows that GE is headed for its most profitable...